Coca in the Cola
By Luis A. Gómez
Narco News Andean Bureau Chief
December 20, 2002
This week, Bolivia’s undersecretary of Social Defense, Ernesto
Justiniano, reported that his office had authorized the exportation
of 350,000 bricks (about 159 tons) of coca leaf to the United States
“for the manufacturing of the soft drink, Coca-Cola.”
Yes, read it well, kind readers, a high official of the
government of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada has authorized the
sale of coca to make the most consumed soft drink in the world.
This statement was denied by a spokeswoman of the United States
company, in a telephone interview from Atlanta, with the Mexican
daily El Universal, who said that the company doesn’t use cocaine
and that it never has been part of the drink’s ingredients.
Then, what’s the story?
Three years ago, the Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo reported
that an affiliate of Coca-Cola in Brazil bought large quantities of
coca leaf in Bolivia. However, the sale was never made directly: a
chemical products laboratory (making flavors and other products),
subsidiary of the multinational Monsanto, was in charge of buying
and “processing” the coca leaf, that was then sold to the owners of
the dark-colored soft drink as a mixture. Then, as now, Coca-Cola
denied that it uses coca leaf to manufacture “the real thing.” It
seems that the same is occurring today.
The operation began in this country when the Albo Export company,
once it obtained the necessary licenses, began to warehouse coca
leaf. When the required quantity was collected, it was sent to
Stepan Chemical of Maywood, New Jersey. The volume of each shipment
is determined by the United States laboratory, and according to U.S.
government reports, the processing of the coca leaf includes (they
swear) a “de-cocainization” of the plant. That is to say, they
eliminate the alkaloid that it contains… and later use that to
manufacture medicines, anesthetics and artificial flavors.
The Bolivian media, as a result of this report, has begun to
speculate about the possible use of the coca leaf as an ingredient
in Coca-Cola, although the U.S. company strongly denies it, as its
representative declared to El Universal in Mexico. Adriana
Valladares, its representative in Mexico, says: “Coca-Cola does not
buy coca leaf.” It’s also been made public that the Albo Export, a
company owned by Bolivian Fernando Alborta, has exported coca from
Peru and Bolivia in recent years, and that between 1997 and 1999 it
sent 340 tons of coca leaf to the United States.
These purchase and processing operations are closely monitored in
Bolivia by the General Coca Control and Auditing Board (Digeco, in
its Spanish acronym) and in the United States, of course, by the
DEA, which includes providing the
warehouses with sophisticated alarm systems and storage caskets for
this curious treasure in New Jersey. This suggests an irony: A
government wants to eradicate an Andean vegetable from the planet
and, at the same time, use it within its own territory for medicine
and food products.
In the administrative resolutions of the Undersecretary of Social
Defense 043/01 and 04/02 (the first was published by the previous
president’s government last December 14, 2001), the collection of
coca was authorized but it resulted that Albo Export was not able to
complete the transaction mentioned above. In reality, only 50,000
bricks, instead of the full 350,000, have been delivered. Nothing
has been sent to Stepan Chemical, the company that has been accused
of contaminating water and land on the border of the United States
and Mexico (in the Matamoros region), also an affiliate of Monsanto.
Because, in Yungas, the traditional coca leaf cultivation region
in Bolivia, there has not been much commercialization and the price
has risen, Albo Export, in order to be able to complete its request
and send its shipments in March 2003, has sought permission to store
coca leaf in the Sacaba Market, in Cochabamba, in the Chapare
region, in the only legal coca cultivation area in the country. But,
as Undersecretary Justiniano says, this represents a very small
portion of the coca grown in Bolivia, in Yungas or Chapare.
However, while explaining how many acres are required to meet the
purchase needs of Albo Export, Justiniano said that 100 tons of coca
require 22 hectares of plantations. This contradicts the report of
the Latin American Center for Scientific Investigation, that in 1996
determined that 114 tons of coca require 42 hectares. The difference
is important: in recent months this has been a central part of
negotiations between the government and Bolivian coca growers; the
question of how much land is required to satisfy internal and
foreign demand for coca.
For now, while the Coca-Cola executives deny using the leaf for
their beverage, Congressman Evo Morales has already said that coca
should not only be exported, it should also be industrialized. “It
seems like a large concession to export 150 tons to the United
States. All along, coca from Chapare has been exported, including,
in some cases, to meet lower prices for Albo Export in Villa Tunari,
in a large operation that lowered the price of coca in order to be
able to buy it cheaply,” said Evo to the daily La Prensa of La Paz,
on Wednesday.
This story is just beginning and as it develops, kind readers,
will be the subject of future reports in Narco News, not only to see
if we can discover the formula of the black soft drink (and if coca
is used in its elaboration), but also looking at the moral hypocrisy
of the United States on this issue, modifying its position regarding
coca, depending clearly on whether its own economic (or
pharmaceutical) interests are at stake. Of course, the matter will
be negotiated face-to-face, as Senator Filemón Escóbar of the
Movement Toward Socialism party (MAS) says, “between the president
of the poor (Evo) and the president of the rich (Gonzalo Sánchez de
Lozada).”
Stay tuned because the coming year will bring many matters to
discuss on that stage…
Correction, December 23:
Kind readers: Between the tobacco smoke and the research
papers, this correspondent got a fact confused. The Stepan
Chemical company of Maywood, New Jersey, is not an affiliate of
the multinational Monsanto company. In fact, Stepan is a
multinational company on its own, with affiliates in a dozen
countries. We regret the error.
Luis A. Gómez